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2:36

Alright. Here comes the show. Did

2:39

you know eating too little can actually

2:41

make you fatter? No. It's totally true.

2:44

There's many reasons why eating too little

2:46

will actually cause you to be fatter

2:49

than you are

2:49

now. That's what we're gonna talk about today.

2:51

I can't wait to see the TikTok clip

2:53

of that. I know. They

2:55

had a contact parts of the Yeah.

2:57

This is a whole pie by the way. She'll

2:59

just listen to the executive. Please listen.

3:01

Yeah. But we're gonna we're gonna break

3:03

this down as to why this

3:06

can happen and how this happens. And

3:08

by the way, for anybody who's watching who's been

3:10

training people for ten years or more, you've

3:12

seen this happen

3:14

inevitably, you've seen people in this situation.

3:16

Either that or you're still stuck in the phase that I think

3:18

was in for a long time where you just think, like, twice in

3:20

a long year. Yeah. Yeah. More or

3:21

twice, lie to you. To where to god. Everybody

3:24

likes Yeah. Totally. So

3:26

there's, you know, there's some interesting phenomena that

3:28

happens when you eat too little for

3:31

too long. And then there's some behavioral things that

3:33

happen. And so we're gonna kinda address all of those.

3:36

But, you know, the the The

3:38

first thing 2037 what this is

3:41

fatter doesn't necessarily

3:43

mean heavier. And I wanna say that because

3:46

you can lose weight and actually

3:48

become fatter as a as a

3:51

percentage of your body weight. Right? So

3:53

If you were a two hundred pound male

3:55

and you were ten percent body fat, that means

3:57

that you have twenty pounds of body fat on

4:00

your body. But let's say you lost

4:02

twenty pounds of muscle, but

4:04

you lost no body fat. So you lost you still

4:06

have twenty pounds of body fat on your body. But

4:09

now you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds. Your

4:11

body fat percentage is now higher because

4:13

twenty pounds is a higher percentage

4:16

of hundred and eighty pounds than is of two

4:18

hundred pounds. And you'll look fatter.

4:20

Yeah. In extreme cases, obviously,

4:22

twenty pounds body fat any one hundred pound

4:24

individual would be would

4:26

look very different than on a hundred pound individual.

4:29

So this is a big one, and we've seen this

4:31

ourselves. I experienced this as somebody

4:33

who's fitness fanatic? I remember losing weight and

4:35

actually having my body fat percentage go up and

4:37

how confusing that will and

4:39

is, like, you got angry Yeah.

4:41

Like, how can this be possible? I know this is always

4:43

a tough one for clients to tough pill

4:45

to swallow, especially when they've been, you

4:47

know, working so hard at losing

4:49

weight and overall weight. And then 2037

4:51

find out that, you know, their body

4:54

now comprised mainly

4:56

of body fat. And they've actually lost

4:58

muscle in this process was was a frustrating

5:00

thing. But this is where that whole term like skinny fat

5:03

and all that, like, kinda came out of Exactly. Did

5:05

you have us? Do you have a story about this out? Well, I have

5:07

I have a couple stories, but the

5:09

one that I'm thinking about right now that

5:11

where I realized how

5:13

much of a problem this was not just

5:16

with our clients, but actually with my

5:18

coaches and trainers that were teaching my

5:20

clients. Mhmm. So I ran this competition.

5:22

And I can't remember if Justin was you

5:25

were

5:25

Yeah.

5:25

I was a part of it. Who are you part of the first one? I couldn't

5:27

remember if you were with me with the first one or

5:29

not. So we ran this competition

5:31

where I used to do this where I I had

5:33

a a friend who owned the fitness

5:35

wave, the Dunk tank, So hydrodable

5:38

yeah. There was a

5:38

mobile one in the Bay Area. In fact, they had

5:40

the rights to all in California, and we became

5:42

friends. And when I

5:45

found out that that was one of the most accurate

5:47

ways to find body fat percentage. And

5:49

so I ran this competition amongst

5:51

my trainer This was an annual thing that I would

5:53

do every year, so I did this for many years.

5:56

But I remember the first year

5:58

I did this, how shocking it was

6:00

for all of my trainers. I mean, I

6:02

had train I had I had more

6:04

than half of my trainers get

6:07

fatter -- Mhmm. -- according to the body

6:09

fat zone. Professionals. That

6:12

know how to diet and know how to train that

6:14

came back. And so and I well,

6:16

I do remember seeing that many going like, oh, shit.

6:18

Is this thing broken? Is it not

6:20

working? Like, look, they were doing the most extreme

6:22

workouts you can think of. The most extreme

6:24

eating, like, the new their nutrition was

6:26

just, like, super restrictive. And so they thought,

6:29

man, we're gonna kill this company. Yeah.

6:31

And so it blew my and

6:33

then but would that really open my eyes

6:35

that, wow, if a bunch of

6:37

professionals that understand nutrients,

6:41

understand building muscle, understand

6:43

fat loss, understand exercise science,

6:46

failed at this when there was

6:48

money behind it in a competition for three

6:50

months. And it wasn't a lack of discipline or

6:53

hard work towards the goal it

6:55

was a lack of of knowledge and understanding

6:58

on how to approach it. Mhmm. And the the best

7:00

way to go about it, and it really opened

7:02

my eyes 2037, like, wow. If this is happening,

7:04

to my staff who's then teaching my

7:07

clients, how much is this

7:09

permeating the entire industry of

7:11

of clientele that are trying to lose

7:13

body fat. And so that was a a very

7:15

pivotal point in my career. It's probably, like, year

7:18

six or so into

7:20

being a manager and and managing trainers.

7:23

It really shifted the way I looked at, you

7:25

know, caloric balance, training intensity,

7:28

diet intensity, like, how hard you cut.

7:30

Like, all these things -- Oh. --

7:32

see more muscle building. And from the very beginning

7:35

-- Yeah. -- there's a weight loss

7:36

this happened to me by the way. So I'm I'm including

7:38

myself. It's the

7:39

same. I was getting Like, lottery. III

7:42

got fatter. was pissed. was like, how is that

7:44

possible? I lost ten pounds. Yeah. I was

7:46

I was so baffled by it, and

7:48

what it was was I had lost an

7:50

equal amount of

7:52

muscle as I did fat. And

7:55

because I because I'm now a smaller

7:57

version myself and I lost exactly five

7:59

pounds of fat and five pounds of

8:01

muscle, technically, the body fat percentage

8:03

went up because now it's a smaller percentage of

8:05

of me because it's smaller version. So I learned

8:07

this both ways.

8:10

I did the same thing where I lost weight, and

8:12

I did the same thing, overtrained, you know, cut

8:14

my calories too aggressively. Body fat

8:16

percentage went up a little bit, and I was like, what the hell is

8:18

going on? I did the math and I'm like, oh my god,

8:20

I lost muscle. Then I had an

8:22

experience in the opposite where

8:25

I went on a bulk and

8:27

I tested my body fat just for the hell of it

8:29

within the beginning stages of the

8:30

bowl. You

8:31

got leaner. You got leaner? Yeah. Same here. And I

8:33

did the math. I remember doing the math, and I said,

8:35

how is this possible. It's just crazy. Yeah.

8:37

I did the math and it's like, oh, I have the same amount

8:39

of body fat on my body. Because when you do your

8:41

percentage, you could figure out loosely

8:43

how much, like, pounds of body fat you have

8:45

versus lean body mass. Lean body mass everything. That's not

8:48

body fat. And I remember I gained

8:50

I remember what a four pounds of lean body mask

8:52

just say, my body fat

8:54

went down though because I didn't gain any body

8:56

fat. So it wasn't that I

8:58

didn't gain body fat. I didn't lose body fat either.

9:01

Yeah. It just went down as a percentage of my

9:03

overall body weight. So gaining lean body

9:05

mass, pure muscle is actually

9:07

one effective way of lowering your

9:09

body fat percentage. Not only that, but

9:11

then you also in turn just sped up

9:13

your

9:13

metabolism.

9:14

Oh, yeah. And then all the positive stuff that Yeah. Yep.

9:16

I mean, I the exact same thing happened to me

9:18

as I remember going on a bulk after that,

9:20

and it was just like, what the hell?

9:22

I'm eating to gain yet now

9:25

I'm leaning out, and the opposite was

9:27

what was going on before, and I failed that was I

9:29

mean, I it was you know, there's a lot of trainers I had that

9:31

were in denial. I mean, for the longs

9:33

time, they just swore it was broken.

9:34

Mhmm. Oh, it doesn't work. It's not a cleaner.

9:36

I'm lighter. But they had they had the breakdown,

9:38

which was so great to what you're talking about. Like, we didn't

9:41

even have to do the math. Like, And I had

9:43

to tell you water, tells you water,

9:45

lean body mass, fat mass, everything.

9:47

So it was clear. You could see exactly what

9:49

happened. Like, okay. I lost fifteen

9:51

to twenty pounds on the scale, but

9:53

a higher percentage of it was muscle.

9:55

Why? Well, because I overtrained and

9:58

under eight, at at a high intensity

10:00

for six to eight weeks

10:03

and six to eight weeks of low calorie

10:05

and punishing my body Well, it

10:07

resulted in my body pairing down muscle

10:09

at as fast of a rate that I was burning

10:11

body fat. And there you go, I got

10:14

a higher body fat percentage. Even though

10:16

you and that's why it's deceiving as you look

10:18

smaller and leaner. I look as I lost

10:20

some fat, so my my belly fat had

10:22

gone down a little bit and that my waist was

10:25

smaller.

10:25

Also, you lose water because you're probably cutting

10:27

carbs

10:28

and stuff. Yeah. But it's but then you've been then

10:30

when you actually are honest with yourself, because we

10:32

play games with ourselves. Right? How often is

10:34

the reflection of the mirror? Do you look at it

10:36

objectively versus subjectively? Mhmm. Well,

10:38

for a lot of people who are struggling with weight

10:40

loss, if they just lose weight on the scale,

10:42

they'll look in the mirror and be like, oh, I'm smaller. I

10:44

must be

10:45

leaner. Mhmm.

10:45

But it's like, no, you're you're actually flabbier.

10:48

Because you lost muscle. Yeah. I was just kinda laughing

10:50

myself because I remember even

10:52

my meat going into that

10:55

dunk

10:55

tank. I was like, it must be the technique. You

10:57

know?

10:57

Like, I must not be, like, getting rid of

11:00

stuff. I'm too bland. You know?

11:02

Like like

11:03

basically drowning myself in that point

11:05

trying to get better numbers. Yeah. And it just

11:08

I couldn't, like, deal with the fact that

11:09

I remember what I did the same thing. I so

11:11

I remember asking him. Right? Because we were friends. I'm,

11:13

like, what's the his name was Aaron. I said, Aaron.

11:15

I was, like, if if I'm really good

11:18

at letting air out and someone's really bad at

11:20

it, like, what? I mean, can you make a huge

11:22

difference? And he's, well, huge in comparison

11:24

this, but, like, you

11:25

know, point two five.

11:26

No. I know. Yeah. He's like a percent. Yeah. He's

11:28

like a like, the most you could possibly

11:30

do the of the worst and the best person would be

11:32

a discrepancy of, like, point two file. Am

11:34

I okay. So if it's off, it ain't that far.

11:36

No. I didn't make four percent of you trying to drown

11:39

myself.

11:39

Yeah. Did did did you do that where you went underneath

11:41

it? Yes.

11:43

I was, like, retching. Yeah. You can get a lot of all

11:45

your air out. You know

11:48

what's funny about this is one of my

11:50

later on when I became good at what I was doing,

11:53

one of my hallmark, successful,

11:56

wonderful techniques at getting

11:58

someone who would come to me who struggled

12:00

with weight loss, who struggled with fat loss, had

12:02

been going low calories forever and excessive

12:04

cardio forever. One of the my favorite

12:06

things to do was have them bump their

12:08

calories, bump their proteins, stop the cardio lift

12:10

weights, and then show them get get show them getting

12:12

leaner. This was And it would blow their was the

12:14

beginning of the philosophy that you heard me

12:16

talk about in the show time of I began

12:19

to stop ever putting

12:21

people on restricted diets and I began

12:23

adding to the diet. Mhmm. That became

12:25

my my no matter how much weight

12:28

you had to lose. I don't care how big you were.

12:31

I looked to assess your diet, and I added

12:33

food into the diet. And there's that there's behavioral aspect

12:35

to it. That's why I that and that was what I learned

12:37

afterwards. But the original reason why I did

12:39

it was because what I learned from the show, my mind

12:41

blowing Yeah. And then also And I saw then

12:43

I saw what happens with the behavioral stuff,

12:46

and it was just like, oh my god. This is the

12:48

answer, which by the way, it's interesting to

12:50

me. That this is not the industry

12:52

norm. Yeah. It's not. It's still like,

12:55

we still have this far behind. We still

12:57

have this cut calories and burn

12:59

like crazy mentality to lose

13:01

body

13:01

weight. And it's not the best

13:03

strategy in energy management and

13:05

having good workouts and, like, there's just so

13:07

many benefits to having this

13:09

approach versus the look at the data. The behavioral

13:12

aspects are the most important, but the the data

13:14

is clear on this. If you when they do when

13:16

they do studies on people who just cut calories, they

13:19

lose a significant amount of muscle oftentimes

13:21

as much muscle as body fat. When

13:23

they add cardio to it, it gets worse.

13:25

When they add cardio plus other exercise, it's

13:28

still not good. Resistance training plus diet

13:30

seems to be the best approach where you tend to hold

13:32

on the most muscle. Sometimes you can even

13:34

lose muscle like that though because the signal to build

13:36

muscle can still be overcome with

13:38

too low of calorie. So that brings us

13:40

to the first point, which is this. If

13:42

you eat too little, you you'll lose muscle.

13:45

And when you lose muscle, you

13:47

slow down your metabolism. You're actually getting

13:49

rid of or or reducing

13:52

your capacity to burn calories on

13:54

your own. You're actually making it harder for

13:56

yourself down the line. So even

13:58

if you do lose more body fat

14:01

to muscle, but you still lost a significant amount of

14:03

muscle. Now you set yourself

14:05

up so that in the future, you it's

14:07

gonna be harder for you to to to

14:09

continuing to maintain. So, lose and

14:11

by the way, losing muscle, again,

14:13

if you lose muscle and you don't lose body

14:16

fat, and you lose weight on the scale. You're you're

14:18

fatter

14:18

now. You're fatter you have

14:20

a higher body fat percentage. People get

14:22

so hung up with the scale. I

14:24

think it really screws people up. The example I used

14:26

to tell people, I used to love using this example. Someone

14:28

would come to me and say, just wanna lose thirty pounds of

14:30

scale. I said, well, do you wanna lose fat or muscle? And

14:32

they say, well, I don't care. How much I don't care. I

14:34

just wanna lose weight. Like, well, we could cut your leg off

14:36

and then always look at me and

14:37

laugh. Yeah. Because it's true. Right? It's not

14:40

just about weight, it's the body fat

14:42

that you wanna that you will wanna get rid

14:44

of. I mean, your body has these natural mechanisms

14:46

in place for survival. And if we

14:48

just always don't know. We always try and go

14:50

against that fact. Like, the fact is,

14:53

like, we need our body trend preserve itself

14:55

trying to provide it with adequate energy

14:57

to keep doing what it needs to do. But,

15:00

you know, us trying to to basically

15:02

restrict our calories and not feed

15:04

it, but then still give it all this work demand in

15:06

the load. It's like it Well, she

15:08

especially when muscle is an expensive tissue.

15:10

And it's not necessarily It's

15:12

not Sarry to have. Mhmm. And

15:14

so your body's gonna be like, that's the first to

15:16

go. It's like, we don't need this. That's right. Why am I

15:18

gonna keep it? You're not stimulating

15:22

it the way you're supposed

15:23

2037, so I'm getting rid of it. That's right. And then the

15:25

example I gave of how you could actually build

15:28

muscle, gain no body fat, but

15:30

get a little heavier on the scale, but still be leaner. Because

15:32

now that body fat per that body fat that you have is

15:34

a smaller percentage. When your calories

15:36

are too low, good luck trying to build muscle.

15:39

Your body can have all the muscle

15:41

building signal in the world. But if

15:43

your calories are too low, if your proteins

15:45

are too low, if your essential fats are

15:47

not where they where they need to be, building

15:50

muscles impossible. It's like giving

15:52

a bunch of construction workers plans

15:56

to build a house. Like, they show up. You got fifty workers.

15:58

We're here to build a house. Here's your plan. No wood. No

16:00

wood. No bricks. No concrete. No nothing. Build

16:02

it. Like, we can't. We don't have the building

16:05

blocks So eating too little

16:07

makes this impossible. And then the

16:09

second part, which is I already kinda mentioned,

16:11

is you've slowed your metabolism down. One

16:14

of the fastest ways to get your body. To

16:16

learn how to burn less calories is

16:19

to eat way less than

16:21

you need or eat too low of calories. And

16:23

then simultaneously, not strength

16:25

strength. You lose that muscle, even

16:27

if you don't lose a muscle by the way, your body

16:29

actually starts to adapt little And I've said this

16:31

so many times on on the podcast. There's

16:33

a range of calories that your body can

16:35

burn with the same lean body mass that

16:38

you have. Your body can learn to be more

16:40

or less efficient with calorie

16:42

storage, calorie burning, and just

16:45

getting your body to think it needs to lose muscle. Even

16:47

before it loses muscle, you'll start to see

16:50

metabolic adaptation. Now if you lose muscle,

16:52

now you've lost physical capacity

16:55

to burn calories. And a slower metabolism

16:57

makes it much harder in a modern society

16:59

where you're surrounded by food and so on. Right? So

17:02

I mean, it makes sense. I could I could use this as

17:04

an example. I could snap my fingers and

17:06

increase everybody's metabolism. Right now, listening

17:08

is by fifty percent. Everybody would lose weight.

17:10

Everybody will get leaner as a result.

17:13

You don't want a slower metabolism

17:15

unless you're living in the wilderness and

17:17

you're hunting in foraging for your own food, in

17:19

which case a slow metabolism is

17:22

beneficial. But if you live anywhere in

17:25

any kind of modern society, a slow

17:27

metabolism is is not an

17:29

asset. It's liability. You want a body

17:31

that burns lots of calories on its own because you're probably gonna

17:33

be sitting a lot. You're probably not gonna be moving

17:35

a lot. You're probably gonna, you know,

17:37

eat more than you you should.

17:39

There's there's tasty food. It's very convenient.

17:42

Fastenant towels. It's a wonderful buffer. Against

17:44

all of that stuff. And eating too little for too long,

17:47

especially in combination with losing

17:49

money. Lots of cardio or not strength training,

17:51

you're going to get a slower metabolism. There's

17:53

a study that I referred to a hundred million times,

17:55

and and I'll do it again. And it was

17:57

a groundbreaking study where they went

18:00

to modern hunter gatherer tribe called

18:02

the Hodsa tribe, And they live

18:04

the way that we lived, you know, fifty

18:06

thousand, hundred thousand years ago, presumably,

18:08

which is they don't have modern agriculture, they

18:10

don't have technology. They hunt and

18:12

they gather and they move a

18:14

lot. In comparison to the average westerner,

18:17

they move a lot. And

18:19

yet, when scientists went down and

18:21

through sophisticated testing tested

18:23

their metabolic rates, what they found

18:26

was these hods that tribes people, they

18:28

burned generally the same amount of calories

18:30

as the average westerner, and they

18:32

moved way more. And you think, well, how's that possible?

18:34

Well, the kind of movement that they did wasn't

18:36

like this crazy muscle building

18:38

movement. It was a lot of cardio, lots of running, lots

18:40

of walking. And and your our

18:43

bodies evolved.

18:44

Efficient at it now. It has to be. Yeah.

18:46

It it doesn't make sense for a hunter gather

18:48

to burn seven thousand towers a day. You

18:50

can't find something

18:51

Well, and if if if it didn't happen that

18:53

way, all of our athletes would disappear.

18:55

Yeah. Because anybody who's ever seen a

18:57

professional athlete, they're training volume

18:59

is unbelievable. And if if just

19:02

training more

19:02

cardio, burning more calories was

19:04

an effective method to continue to

19:06

lose, then every athlete would be sixty

19:09

pounds and just a a bag of

19:10

coffee, like, twenty thousand calories.

19:12

Yeah. Or they'd have to eat, you know, twenty, thirty thousand

19:14

calories to maintain that, which is not the

19:15

case. None of

19:16

the assumption, like, Food's always been that readily

19:18

available. Yeah. That's like I feel like

19:20

you we have to address to the the fitness

19:22

deluxe that that

19:25

glom 2037 the studies that talk about

19:28

that, you know, three pounds of muscle

19:30

metabolically is insignificant in

19:32

so That

19:32

doesn't You shouldn't worry about losing

19:35

it. It's it's you're gonna have when you go in it, when you

19:37

go because this is this is part this is messaging, right,

19:39

in our space. You know, you shouldn't

19:41

worry about losing a couple pounds. If you gotta lose

19:43

fifty pounds of fat, you need to reduce calories,

19:45

you need to move more, and it doesn't

19:47

matter if you lose five or six pounds of

19:49

of muscle along the way of losing your

19:51

twenty pounds of body fat, and

19:54

I don't think that's a good message at

19:56

all. And I think that the studies that

19:58

they attach themselves to are

20:00

very they're

20:02

narrow. Yeah. Very narrow in comparison

20:04

to what we know is happening

20:07

with the body. I mean, I can't explain

20:09

to you how I was able to get

20:11

somebody to have five

20:13

more pounds of muscle, but yet eating eight,

20:15

nine hundred calories more a

20:17

day, but I've seen it. I've seen

20:20

it so many times happen before.

20:22

Now, with the studies show is that, oh,

20:25

the muscle is only needing an extra six

20:27

to twenty calories more a day. So

20:29

mathematically, that doesn't make sense. But

20:31

then you have to factor in the behavioral change

20:33

that happens for that person because they're

20:36

they're fitter than what they were before. Also,

20:38

what the behavioral change around in order

20:40

to maintain and keep that muscle around

20:42

that, also the behaviors around

20:44

nutrition in order to maintain that

20:46

muscle. More than that, Adam. If if there's a lot of

20:48

unexplained, the metabolism the million metabolism

20:50

is super super complex compared with

20:52

the universe. Yeah. It's like it's like the it's like

20:55

the the brain is more complex. Everything else

20:57

is easier to understand. We

20:59

become more or less efficient with our currently in body

21:01

mass. So, I mean, there's studies on

21:03

POWs, people who are prisoners of war

21:05

who's surviving on three hundred calories a day for for

21:08

years and years and years, how is that possible? Right?

21:10

The human body has this incredible capacity

21:13

to become extremely thrifty and

21:15

efficient with calories or much

21:18

less efficient. This is why you have people with,

21:20

you know, we all know those people, the skinny guy or girl

21:22

that eats like crazy, doesn't gain any weight, the person

21:24

who eats way less. Gains tons body fat, how

21:26

is this possible? It's obviously not one 2037 one.

21:28

It's obviously not a pound of muscle equals this,

21:31

a pound of muscle equals that. But If

21:33

you trend towards building and

21:35

you do build, you will trend towards

21:37

a less efficient metabolism meaning

21:40

burn more calories. You want less

21:42

efficiency

21:43

in in with the with the problems that we have

21:45

in modern society. We don't want a metabolism that

21:48

is super efficient like like

21:50

a super advanced efficient car that

21:52

burns barely

21:53

out of food could be delivered to you. Yeah. Yeah. It's

21:55

not in society like that. Right. Right. So

21:57

it's not it's true. It's not you know, one

21:59

pound of muscle equals this. But if you

22:01

send this signal to build muscle,

22:03

feed it to do so and you build a little

22:05

bit, you see this trend towards a

22:07

faster metabolism. There are individual variances,

22:09

but I have similar example. Adam, we have people on

22:12

the show who call in all the time and

22:14

ask this questions. Who are like, I was started

22:16

out eating twelve hundred calories. Now I'm eating twenty five

22:18

hundred calories, and I'm not gaining

22:20

any body fat. It's like, well, how did that happen?

22:22

I and I only gained, like, four pounds a month. Right. How did that

22:24

happen? Their body's less efficient. It's burning

22:27

more of these calories. You wanna do that. You wanna move

22:29

in that direction. Well, one of the strongest signals

22:31

you can send your body's slows metabolism down

22:33

is the a super low calorie and do it

22:35

for a long period of time. Even with strength

22:37

training, you tend to see a

22:40

metabolism slowdown. If you do this for

22:42

too

22:42

long, So eating too little for

22:44

too long can definitely

22:46

result in metabolism that that decides or

22:48

body that adapts to become more efficient. Know, the other

22:51

thing that it does into your third point is

22:53

you're less motivated to move

22:55

more because you have less energy. And this is

22:57

actually hitting home for me currently right

22:59

now. So I've been back on my kick now

23:02

for this is, I think, week three or four

23:04

of really dialed in nutritionally and

23:06

and training. And one

23:08

of the things I needed to do was I

23:10

had like Justin, I was skipping

23:12

breakfast. I wasn't moving very much. So

23:15

was like, you know what? I need to cut out some calories

23:17

because I'm not moving very much. And

23:19

so I that was my way of, you

23:21

know, combating the additional calories and

23:23

making sure that if I'm not training a lot, I better

23:25

not put on a bunch body fat, one of the easiest

23:27

ways. I'll skip breakfast, have my coffee

23:29

or caffeine in the morning. I'm fine. Don't eat till

23:31

one or two o'clock. Okay. Well, that was fine

23:33

to help mitigate not

23:35

putting on extra weight. But, boy, it made it

23:37

difficult to motivate myself to

23:39

train at noon or one. Oh, right. just I

23:42

just felt tired after podcasting was a

23:44

motivate. So if you haven't noticed, like, I've been

23:46

eating again, like, at least a meal or

23:49

Like I said in the like I've said on this podcast many

23:51

times, my best workouts, best time, like, best

23:53

I ever feel, is when I've got a meal or

23:55

two in me, then my body feels geared

23:57

up and ready to use that fuel and I'm

23:59

more motivated to go do it versus me

24:01

being so fasted in low

24:03

calorie. I just don't have the gas or

24:05

the drive to wanna do that. Yeah. I remember

24:08

years ago, know you guys

24:10

saw this at twenty four fitness. I wasn't there at the time,

24:12

but I I this became a big thing and

24:14

I actually used it. In my wellness studio,

24:16

it was a device called the body bug. was one of the first

24:19

of its kind. Now there's lots of devices that do

24:20

this, but it was groundbreaking when it

24:22

first came to the most

24:23

accurate ones that ever came out. Yeah.

24:25

So you you do is you'd wear this And

24:27

with relative accuracy compared to anything

24:29

else that was out there, very accurate,

24:32

would tell you how many calories you're burning. And it did this

24:34

through sophisticated metrics.

24:36

You would wear it. It was on your arm. It would measure things

24:38

like movement, you know, skin temperature, you

24:40

know, like, there was lots of different heart rate. Lots of different

24:42

things measure. And it was able able to

24:44

within, I think, ten percent error

24:47

was ninety six percent. It was nine okay. So even

24:49

better. So ninety six percent accurate would tell you how many calories

24:51

you're burning. And I remember I would have clients put these

24:53

on and we would see their days how many

24:55

calories they're burning. And I I'll never forget

24:57

because it was such this is one of those moments as

24:59

a trainer where you're like, you know, like like,

25:01

groundbreaking. Right? Yeah.

25:03

They would they I would look at their calories, and they would

25:05

and these are people that were working out every

25:07

day Monday through Friday. Okay? So Monday through

25:09

Friday, they were in the gym for an hour. And I'd look

25:11

at their body bug and I'd be like, what did you do Saturday

25:13

and

25:13

Sunday? Yeah. You burned so

25:15

many calories.

25:16

I'd put dishes away. Yeah. Oh, I was doing

25:18

housework all day. I went to the mall sweeping.

25:21

I was, yeah, walk straight on our side. And

25:23

I'm, like, what? I'm, like, you work out.

25:25

At the gym, Monday through Friday, and then it dawn

25:27

on me. Oh, yeah. Monday through Friday, you work

25:29

out for an hour, then you go out to and you sit down

25:31

the rest of the day. Right. Saturday and Sunday,

25:34

I mean, it wasn't intense, but you were up

25:36

and moving for, like, seven hours. So

25:38

it dawned on me like, okay, all of this,

25:41

like, non specific exercise

25:43

calorie burn is really important. And

25:46

so eating too little, even

25:48

if you force yourself to work out, what they

25:50

find in studies when people cut their calories

25:53

is the rest of the day, they

25:55

sit more, they stand less, They

25:57

walk less, they play less, they

26:00

do less any of anything that

26:02

requires any physical movement, and therefore,

26:04

they actually burn less calories. Eating

26:07

2037 low of calories will affect you behaviorally

26:09

without you even noticing everything from

26:11

tapping your foot to standing

26:13

up, to taking extra steps. Subtle.

26:15

Yes. And I I think that

26:19

because you are going

26:21

to the gym and you're gonna do your workout for the

26:23

day and, like, that's a checkbox for

26:25

you, for movement, for that entire day. And that's,

26:27

like, the majority of my clients was, like, okay, I

26:29

did my bit on Monday

26:31

through Friday and, like, had my hour

26:34

where I just really powered it out. But they're literally

26:36

sitting on their butt the entire day otherwise.

26:38

And it was, like, so revealing that

26:40

on the weekends there was just just being up

26:42

and, like, moving around and and you

26:44

guys don't experience. And yeah. Dude, it was, like,

26:47

it was so many. It

26:48

was, like, hundreds. It was, like, almost thousand

26:50

more calories each. Well, not long after

26:52

that body book came out, they actually did a study

26:54

because I used to used to tell the study all the time

26:56

or it showed that a person

26:59

who trained five to six

27:01

days a week, was it five to six days or fortified.

27:03

It was either four to five days or five to six days

27:05

a week for an hour at a time and today's

27:07

time was still considered sedentary. Yeah.

27:10

Which nobody came in the gym. We used

27:12

to have this survey. Right? That was you'd ask,

27:14

like, would you act yeah. Are you active,

27:16

very active, not active at all? Like, everybody

27:19

would put, like, even very active. Very active.

27:21

Very and it's, like, because if they were,

27:23

oh, I go to the gym, you know, every day. You know,

27:25

alright. Three to the okay. If you go to the gym every day,

27:27

for one hour, but then you have an engineer

27:29

job or you sit at a desk all

27:31

day

27:32

long, like, no, you're sedentary. Yep.

27:34

Like, I'm sorry, but you're one hour of

27:36

activity of four hundred calorie burning

27:38

is not enough to make you considered if you're an

27:40

active person. And think about it this way. It's like

27:42

there's definitely structured exercise. But think about

27:44

the days that you feel energized, that you

27:46

feel good. You move more. Yep.

27:48

You get out more. You play with your kids more.

27:51

You do more things. And eating too

27:53

low of calorie does affect your behaviors

27:55

to make you more sedentary even if you workout,

27:57

even if you have scheduled workouts, and we've seen

27:59

this time and time again. The next thing is

28:01

that eating too low a calorie because of the

28:03

muscle loss, because you're eating

28:05

too little, your hormones actually

28:08

start to shift towards fat storage.

28:10

Alright. Why is that? Eating too

28:12

little is a stress on the body. It's actually

28:14

probably one of the first stresses

28:17

besides being hunted by predators that

28:19

our bodies learn to adapt to because food

28:22

is hard to come by. And your hormones

28:25

can shift and move to

28:27

less body fat, more body fat, more

28:29

muscle, less muscle. K? If you don't believe me,

28:32

look at the studies on men with low testosterone,

28:34

who then take testosterone replacement therapy. They're not

28:36

taking steroids like bodybuilders. They're just getting

28:38

their testosterone levels up to high normal.

28:41

From where they were which is below low.

28:43

Right? Mhmm. What do they find? They gain muscle

28:45

and lose body fat. K? You can see studies

28:47

on growth hormone. Growth hormone will do the same

28:50

thing. You give growth hormone to somebody who's

28:52

deficient or who's older. And they don't

28:54

have to work out. They don't have to do anything. They end up building

28:56

a little muscle. Bring a little bit of body fat, even

28:58

if they don't change their diet. What's going on?

29:00

Hormones. Hormones signal the body

29:03

to do lots of different things. And a couple

29:05

of things that the hormones your hormones tell your body

29:07

to do is build muscle or burn body fat.

29:09

Well, if we eat too little for too long,

29:12

your body tries to protect itself

29:14

one of the ways that one of the best ways your body protects

29:17

itself is to store calories. Like,

29:19

it's like it's like you're in a recession. The

29:21

economy's going to crap. What do you do?

29:23

Honey, stop spending money. Mhmm. We need to save as

29:25

much money as possible because we don't know what's gonna happen.

29:28

Your body does this with calories. If

29:30

it feels too much stress, and this is

29:32

all stresses, but we're talking about too low calories,

29:34

it'll shift its hormones

29:36

2037 fat storage reserve. 2037 preserve

29:39

but not muscle gain, but that's by the way, that

29:41

becomes a louder signal when you

29:43

also increase the activity and

29:45

intensity. Yes. So not only do you eat

29:47

extraordinarily low calories, then you go

29:49

punish yourself a gym, which tends to be the

29:51

person to. Very few people I know decide they're

29:53

gonna go on extreme low calorie diet and then go, oh, I'm just

29:55

gonna do yoga and walk. Those same

29:58

people that go extreme diet tend to also go extreme

30:00

training. And they do the high intensity,

30:03

the endurance, the circuit training, the

30:05

everyday, the seventy five hard.

30:07

This is those same mentality. That those

30:09

people and and you're now you're sending even louder

30:11

signal for your body to preserve. That's

30:13

right. And then okay. So this next one, I think,

30:15

is one of the biggest most important ones,

30:18

this is a behavioral one, which is this

30:21

tends to result in a behavior where

30:23

when you do eat more, you

30:25

tend to binge. Yeah. So let's let me paint

30:28

the picture. K? You eat too little for a

30:30

long period of time. You end up losing muscle,

30:32

slowing the metabolism down, hormones

30:34

shift, to fat storage,

30:37

promotion, and less muscle.

30:39

So you've got this like perfect storm. And

30:41

then you go off. Why? Because

30:44

you've been restricting for so long, your appetite's

30:46

high, maybe one vacation. Hey, this is what

30:48

I can do now. So your body's primed

30:50

to store body fat. You've been eating low calories

30:52

for a long time, then you go binge,

30:54

which almost always is the

30:56

the behavior that follows. Now

30:58

you store a ton of body fat. And I've seen this

31:01

time and time again where a client goes on vacation for

31:03

two weeks -- Mhmm. -- and gains, like,

31:05

seven pounds of body fat

31:07

mathematically, you know, difficult that is to do when you

31:09

do the math. And yet, you see stuff

31:11

like this. It's pretty wild. Well, we when we were

31:13

trainers, we didn't know this because I I think the studies

31:15

came out later, but we now know too when you when

31:17

you go from that hardcore restricting

31:20

to hardcore binging like that, you

31:22

actually increase your fat cells. The number

31:24

of fat cells, which that doesn't happen in any normal

31:26

case right now. Typically, what happens to us when we

31:28

gain weight, lose weight, is our fat cells

31:31

grow, and then they shrink. And that's how we

31:32

Yeah. This is recent, but they

31:34

have an stream environment. Yeah. This is recently.

31:36

Norton brought this up because of competitors

31:38

when they extreme diet and then they, you know,

31:40

bodybuilders and visit competitors and

31:43

figure competitors post show. We'll just, like,

31:45

eat, like, crazy. Right? For, like, a month or two and gain, like,

31:47

twenty pounds, fifteen pounds, thirty pounds. And

31:49

what they what they found is that they they actually

31:51

added fat cells to their body. And they and

31:53

the theory is that the body because

31:56

they went so restricted and then they went excess,

31:59

it tried to adapt by increasing

32:01

or improving its ability to capture calories. So it

32:03

actually added fat

32:04

cells, which then don't go away. Typically,

32:06

they don't go away. Once you add the fat cells, they don't go

32:08

away. Which I saw this firsthand with

32:10

all the competitors, which it was, you

32:12

know, they they had this formula of exactly

32:15

what you said. They restrict hardcore for the

32:17

show. After show, they gain like

32:19

crazy. They're not really worried about body

32:20

fat. They go again. And for some reason,

32:22

every time, every show, every show,

32:24

they had a harder time doing

32:26

the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, I this

32:28

is my formula. This is my body time. I had the

32:30

same amount of muscle. I should be able to

32:32

do ex calories x amount of cardio,

32:35

x amount of training to result in that same body,

32:37

but I'm not able to. And they had some term

32:39

for it that they would call it. Like, they're they were

32:41

foot deficits what they used they all called they call

32:43

fatigue and they need to reset. They'd have to

32:45

stop doing shows for a while. And it's like, no,

32:47

it's the way your extreme dieting. That's

32:49

causing you to add fat cells, which is making

32:51

it that much more difficult every time

32:53

you don't cut for another

32:54

show. Yeah. It's it's the most important

32:57

thing to manage or or to pay attention

32:59

to whenever you're when you're trying to

33:01

be healthy, fit, long term, lean,

33:03

long term are your behaviors because that's what's gonna

33:05

stick. And if you go you

33:07

eat too little for too long and then you find yourself

33:10

binging occasionally where you, you know, it's like

33:12

you just go off your diet a little bit. It's like you go

33:14

wait so off that you're uncomfortable. That

33:16

you eat to the point where you can't breathe type a deal.

33:18

Like that behavior is

33:21

is it's gonna be impossible for you to maintain

33:23

a good lean, healthy, physique long term with that.

33:25

And going too hard in extreme of one direction,

33:28

it tends to lead to a

33:30

opposite reaction on the other end,

33:33

which is this binging type behavior. Lastly,

33:37

people who eat too little for too long,

33:39

they are at a higher risk of nutrient

33:41

deficiencies. Nutrients or

33:43

what obviously food contains nutrients?

33:46

Well, if you're eating thousand calories a day and you've

33:48

been doing it for long time, you're only getting a thousand

33:50

calories worth of food with

33:52

of nutrients that comes in that food. Yeah. And

33:54

unless you're eating, like, super hyper

33:56

nutrient dense food, plus you're taking

33:58

multi vitamins, you're probably

34:00

gonna result or see some nutrient

34:03

deficiencies. This was very common.

34:05

When I started working with practitioners

34:08

who would do nutrient testing. And I

34:10

would get clients who were, you know and they were typically

34:12

women where they real real little for a long period of time

34:14

and I'd say, hey, let's test your nutrient levels.

34:17

They would do hair test, another test, to see blood

34:19

test, to see where the nutrients are at.

34:21

I could almost always predict oh, this

34:23

woman eats barely anything. She's been away for a long

34:25

time. She's skinny fat. She's been dieting for half

34:27

a life. She's gonna come back with two

34:29

or three nutrient deficiencies. Always, almost

34:31

always they come back with some kind of

34:33

nutrient. Vitamin D or or or

34:35

zinc or some b vitamin nutrient deficiency

34:38

was always well, I think this is super common because

34:40

already I forget what with

34:42

the researchers run this, but I believe, like, the

34:44

average woman gains weight on, like,

34:46

fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred calories. It's

34:48

really, really low. And so I think

34:51

chronically the society

34:52

is, especially, females

34:54

have under ate, and think just because

34:56

of what's been promoted to them for so long.

34:58

So you take that same, you know, female

35:00

client who's already only eating

35:03

fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred calories and is

35:05

unhappy with their weight and they wanna lose say twenty

35:07

or thirty

35:07

pounds, and then you cut and restrict that. You

35:09

can't possibly get there's there's not a nutrient

35:12

dense enough food to get enough

35:14

without You're not gonna vary it up that much either.

35:17

I

35:17

mean Yeah. -- when you're in, like, a calorie

35:19

deficit that's, like, extreme a lot of times

35:21

2037. Like, the the one thing you have

35:23

is 2037 control is that, like, I can

35:26

I can limit and reduce the amount of

35:28

options so that way I can be consistent because it's

35:30

all about being consistent, you know, for

35:32

for that type of mentality staying

35:35

in that that lean and low of a death deficit?

35:38

So to be able to vary the

35:40

amount of food that you're bringing into

35:42

your diet, which is gonna produce like those

35:44

micronutrients or, you know, just any

35:46

micronutrients in

35:47

general. Like, there's there's gonna be

35:49

a lot of opportunity to to be Deficient.

35:52

Yeah. You're not you typically don't see a thousand

35:54

calorie a day diet, and it's like this wide

35:56

variety of colors and fruits

35:58

and vegetables and whatever. Usually the

36:00

same way. Actually, to be honest, most people eat the same

36:02

thing every single day. By the way, nutrients,

36:05

not just micronutrients, macronutrients, macronutrient

36:08

deficiencies were close to

36:10

deficiencies were quite

36:11

high. You see somebody in low calories all time.

36:13

Mhmm. They

36:13

almost always are 2037 low a protein. And

36:16

oftentimes,

36:17

it helps us. Yeah. The fats. Yeah.

36:19

You know? And and if you're deficient if you're

36:21

deficient in something that's essential, your

36:23

rate of anxiety's higher, potential

36:25

anxiety, depression, other mental

36:27

issues. And then your body is just not

36:29

functionally, not functioning optimally.

36:32

And it's going to lower its nutrient

36:35

thirsty tissues. Muscle.

36:38

Muscle requires lots of nutrients to

36:40

maintain muscle and excuse me, vitamins

36:43

and proteins, even healthy

36:45

fats for your hormones. If your fats are

36:47

not high enough, your hormones are gonna

36:49

be often that, you know, one of the points made about

36:51

hormones shifting towards fat storage. So

36:53

if you eat too low for too long, you're

36:56

probably lacking something. And

36:58

when you lack something that you're that you need,

37:01

your body can up cannot operate the

37:03

way it should. And that makes fat loss

37:05

very very difficult. It's really hard to lose body fat

37:08

when you're unhealthy or at least do it in any

37:10

sustainable way. So I hope we made the case

37:12

that if you eat too little, you could definitely

37:14

make yourself fatter. Look, if you like

37:16

the show, head over to mindpumpfree dot

37:19

com and check out our guides. We have guides that

37:21

can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can

37:23

also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin

37:25

is on Instagram at mindpump. Justin, you can find me

37:27

on Instagram at mindpump 2037 And

37:29

you can find Adam on Instagram at Mindpump Adam.

37:31

Thank you for listening to Mindpump. If

37:34

your goal is to build and shape your body,

37:36

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